Organizational History:

The Division of Biological Sciences functioned from 1949 until about 1955. It was a division of the College of Sciences and Arts, the history of which is as follows.

The College of Sciences and Arts was organized in 1917, part of President Holland's introduction of the college system at WSC. For its first few years, the College was headed by Dean Walter Beach of the Department of Economic Science and History. In about 1921, Vice-president O.L. Waller became acting Dean, and continued as such for several years. In the late 1920s, C.C. Todd began his lengthy tenure as Dean, which was to last until the end of 1948.

After Todd's retirement, the College was reorganized as four separate divisions without any overall Dean.. The four divisions were: 1) the Division of Physical Sciences (S. Towne Stephenson), 2) the Division of Biological Sciences (Winslow Hatch), the Division of Humanities (Albert Thompson) and, 4) the Division of Social Sciences (T.H. Kennedy).

Sometime about 1953, the Office of the Dean was re-established with Albert W. Thompson as Dean, and with two Associate Deans, one for Physical Sciences (Hatch) and one for Humanities (Kennedy). This arrangement remained in place until about 1965. Several persons served successively as Associate Deans.

In about 1965 or 1966, the office of Dean was again dropped and the two Associate Deans were named Deans of their respective areas. For a few years, one dean was called the Senior Dean. Once that title disappeared, the College of Science and Arts basically became two units, one for the science departments and the other for the humanities departments. This arrangement persisted for thirty years, until about 1995 when the two units were fully seperated, becoming the College of Science and the College of Liberal Arts.

Scope and Contents note

Records of the Division of Physical Science consist of the correspondence of the director, Winslow R. Hatch, later Associate Dean. The letters concern a variety of academic administration issues, including curriculum and personnel.

Publication Information

Conditions Governing Access note

The Collection is open for research use.

Immediate Source of Acquisition note

Records of the Division of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences and Arts, were received by the Washington State University Libraries sometime before 1970, and were incorporated with publications of the College of Sciences and Arts until Oct. 1997 when they were reconstituted as a record group in the university archives.